I would like to focus my brief remarks on Shannon Dawdy's very important third question, ‘can archaeology save the world?’ But to show my biases up front, I would rephrase it to read, ‘how can archaeologists usefully contribute to public policy considerations on the future of this planet?’, or perhaps just modify her question to say, ‘how can archaeologists help save the world?’ As one looks at recent books such as Newman, Beatley and Boyer's Resilient cities. Responding to peak oil and climate change (2009), Richard Heinberg's The party's over. Oil, war and the fate of industrial societies (2005), or Howard and Elisabeth Odum's A prosperous way down (2001) or key articles such as ‘Ecology in times of scarcity’ by John Day et al. (2009) or ‘Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy’ by Mathis Wackernagel et al. (2002), it seems clear to me that archaeologists could readily amplify the important arguments mounted by these authors and play a useful role in helping planners confront looming global cultural–ecological issues. It is not that these writers are unaware of archaeology and its potential contributions – Heinberg (2005, 34–38), for example, looks quite favorably on the work of Joseph Tainter – but that archaeological research could be more thoroughly and productively utilized.